It took a while to finish this, but we’re finally here with a blockbuster episode on the 1997 movie Contact. This movie digs deep into the weeds on SETI and radio astronomy and I go in with it to see what it got right and what it got wrong.
Michael Siegel
Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.
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Again, a great presentation. I have a couple of comments. For me, the film made an error in how Foster’s character was portrayed. The point of sexism was made rather strongly in the film, which was a great thing to do, but she is presented very often as almost hysterical or completely cowed by the Powers That Be. Given who that lady was, and her accomplishments, her tear-filled, nearly desperate testimony at the hearing just didn’t ring true to me. She knows what she saw. She understands the difficulties of presenting such things to a Senate committee. She went into that room totally prepared, and I think she would have been quite confident in her testimony, if incredibly frustrated that it wasn’t going to go well. Foster is a fine actress; I don’t fault her. I rather think that she was directed toward a more fragile and victimized affect in her performance. For my little two cents worth, it didn’t work well.
I also had a bit of a problem with the old “we don’t want to freak you out, so we’ll adopt a human form” bit. Not that it didn’t work, just that we’ve seen it before, many times. A movie that handled that question much better is “Arrival.” Those were some damn disturbing aliens, but our plucky science team seemed to handle them pretty well.
And one more point, not so much about the movie. I actually have my doubts about whether finding life “out there” is going to be that big a deal. Headlines, sure, and then life “down here” will go on. You and I will be hugely impressed…and then go have dinner. Klaatu landing in D.C. is one thing, but this notion that humanity at large is actually concerned about being “alone” or learning that we are not “alone” doesn’t strike me as a real important issue on a day-to-day basis. Most of the human population (again, perhaps not you and I, YMMV) already believe they are not “alone” and have lots of iconic religious figures to assure them of that fact.
But let me get back to how much I enjoyed this presentation and all of your presentations. Thank you!Report
Great video. I need to watch more of these. I was wondering if you would also talk about the book, and you did. (The adaptation between the book and the movie in part reminds me of what they also had to do with Bourne Identity – take out all the Cold War stuff that was a substantial part of the plot when the book was written, but of course was obsolete by the 1990s)
I remember in the late 90s early 00’s being able to get a screen saver that purportedly processed radiotelescope data on your own computer in the background – SETI At Home, I believe it was called. I imagine that too is obsolete, now that processing power is at least two orders of magnitude greater (and is probably all being used for crypto, lol)Report
Yeah, SETI@home. We’d wake up in the middle of the night because the modem would turn on and connect in order to drop off the old files and download new ones to process.
And a bummer:
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The conceptual brilliance of the opening sequence always overwhelmed me to the point I never gave any thought at all to the timing being out of sync with the distances portrayed.
The big takeaway I remember from Contact was that an alien civilization that wanted to contact us would not be at all subtle about it, and they’d have almost zero incentive to secretly spy on us. When we find each other, we’ll know.Report
The Snaliens want to boldly go where no snalien has gone before!
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To find new, intelligent life forms that taste good!Report
Yup! Like this one!Report